Dataviz art/skill

Create powerful dataviz with R

Ilya Kashnitsky

CPop SDU, Population Studies masters

2025-04-09

@ikashnitsky.phd

pic.twitter.com/9XUmwpj6SZ
— Ilya Kashnitsky — bsky @ikashnitsky.phd (@ikashnitsky) October 16, 2021

pic.twitter.com/xgVjEQSx3q
— Ilya Kashnitsky — bsky @ikashnitsky.phd (@ikashnitsky) April 2, 2021

My #dataviz course w/ @MPIDRnews & @IMPRS_PHDS starts today. Excited and slightly nervous to deliver to 180+ participants 🙀
The course now has its own account here @DatavizArtSkill
And a hashtag #datavizartskill pic.twitter.com/uPNiFcdIvC
— Ilya Kashnitsky — bsky @ikashnitsky.phd (@ikashnitsky) June 14, 2021

before we start

materials for the course

https://github.com/ikashnitsky/dataviz-one

rule 0 – DO VISUALIZE YOUR DATA

Anscombe’s Quartet

New #chi2017 paper is up. Don't trust statistics alone, visualize your data!https://t.co/amnbAYvsq1 pic.twitter.com/1s6vkge6dl
— Justin Matejka (@JustinMatejka) May 1, 2017

Visualizing summary statistics in a #boxplot is great. But don't forget to explore the underlying data distribution.

Thanks to @JustinMatejka for this great educational dataset.#30DayChartChallenge | #Day27 | #educational #dataviz #Rstats #ggplot2 #statistics #violinplot pic.twitter.com/JfNwMzuash
— Mihaela Bozukova (@MBozukova) April 27, 2021

Remade the @WSJ measles vaccination visualization using ggplot2 and the animation package #rstats pic.twitter.com/cnIScD9ymI
— Michael Lee 🚴📊🇷 (@mikeleeco) June 19, 2017

rule 1 – text should be horizontal

example of a figure improvement

rule 2 – on slides, text should be as large as possible

rule 3 – mind colors, especially regarding colorblind friendliness

https://t.co/KPqzPh06Iq pic.twitter.com/P1YWTIWooR
— Ilya Kashnitsky — bsky @ikashnitsky.phd (@ikashnitsky) May 6, 2020

Great news #rstats #dataviz — the default go-to color selection just got richer 💥🎉

Knowing where it comes from, I know better than to question wherever "turbo" color scheme is really colorblind friendly, but it really blows my mind that something of these colors can be… https://t.co/AVo6cdMD32 pic.twitter.com/pIud4NRjhY
— Ilya Kashnitsky — bsky @ikashnitsky.phd (@ikashnitsky) April 12, 2021

rule 4 – highlight what’s important for the story

Spent way too long trying to work out what was so special about her knee https://t.co/0epzaJeQKk
— Alex Selby-Boothroyd (@AlexSelbyB) June 13, 2021

rule 5 – plots don’t have to be overly complicated to be powerful

Climate change is happening now & is happening everywhere. Our lives are already being affected by the warming of the planet.

Human activities are causing these fundamental changes to the climate. Burning fossil fuels & deforestation are the primary reasons.

Our choices matter. pic.twitter.com/SPnkVYq10u
— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) April 9, 2021

Austria vs Germany ⚽️ The First 111 Years #AUTGER international #football results since 1907:
🇦🇹 10 wins
🇩🇪 25 wins
✖️ 6 draws#dataviz by @tinafrank & @metropop_eu pic.twitter.com/iRjXmpNsOe
— ramon bauer (@metropop_eu) June 3, 2018

🏆⚽ As we head into the round of 16 of the UEFA EURO 2024, which teams do you think were the most efficient?

Germany scored the most goals and shots in the group phase! Serbia, France, and Belgium were the least efficient.#EURO2024 #DataViz #rstats #ggplot2 pic.twitter.com/ghnU9sV2xK
— Cédric Scherer (@CedScherer) June 29, 2024

a great example

Friday and don't know what to do? Train your #ggplot2 skills! 📊
My first blog post "The Evolution of a ggplot (Ep. 1)" is online 🎉https://t.co/fWG4PmyyhU

Thanks to @R4DScommunity @rstudio @dataandme for all the neat #rstats tricks! #tidyverse #DataViz #TidyTuesday #R4DS pic.twitter.com/RRMTSjXFgj
— Cédric Scherer (@CedScherer) May 17, 2019

(not a rule) suggestion

When possible and meaningful for you story – animate

⚽️ With the #EURO2020 approaching, you've probably all been wondering what ~1 million of passes would looks like if all shot at the same time, right? Well wonder no more...

Thanks @StatsBomb for making the data openly available! @observablehq notebook https://t.co/dO4sfQpRi4 pic.twitter.com/fqbdK6PjRd
— Karim Douïeb (@karim_douieb) June 9, 2021

Or make it completely interactive

Dataviz principles

Jonas Shoeley’s slides

https://github.com/jschoeley/idem_viz

Tidyverse

pic.twitter.com/T4QBJaBD7s
— Trust me, I'm a "Biologist" (@TrustBiologist) June 13, 2021

Dataviz art/skill

@ikashnitsky.phd

before we start

materials for the course

rule 0 – DO VISUALIZE YOUR DATA

Anscombe’s Quartet

rule 1 – text should be horizontal

example of a figure improvement

rule 2 – on slides, text should be as large as possible

rule 3 – mind colors, especially regarding colorblind friendliness

rule 4 – highlight what’s important for the story

rule 5 – plots don’t have to be overly complicated to be powerful

a great example

(not a rule) suggestion

When possible and meaningful for you story – animate

Or make it completely interactive

Dataviz principles

Jonas Shoeley’s slides

Tidyverse

The most influential R developer

Hadley Wickham